


Stargazy, Hazy

by MalevolentMagpie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Blindness, Chronic Illness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Keith (Voltron), Pining, Pining Keith (Voltron), Romance, SHEITH - Freeform, Self-Pity, Sheith Month 2020, Stargazing, Sulking, sheithmonth2020, stargardt disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:46:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24714796
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MalevolentMagpie/pseuds/MalevolentMagpie
Summary: Keith is rapidly losing his vision, and his spirit along with it. But Shiro nevercanleave Keith alone; he won't let Keith face this alone either.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 34





	Stargazy, Hazy

**Author's Note:**

> Part of a collaboration with my good friend, the amazingly talented artist [Caliber](https://twitter.com/CaliberChaos) for Sheith Month 2020, Days 6 and 14: "Blind" and "Stargazing." Check out his beautiful art below!

“A paladin of Voltron can’t be blind,” Keith had spit out bitterly once, when he first admitted to Allura that his Stargardt disease diagnosis would soon leave him unable to pilot.

Coran had immediately suggested they try the healing pods, but, as Pidge eventually discovered, the pods’ design impaired their ability to detect lipofuscin. 

“So, short of synthesizing -in this alien castle hurtling through space in the middle of an intergalactic war- some sort of protease inhibitor like leupeptin-”

“In other words, I’m fucked,” Keith cut in.

Her sheepish, sympathetic smile said it all.

Overall, it wasn’t so bad, he told himself every morning. As it turned out, his mental link with his sentient mechanical battleship-lion could mostly compensate for his now nearly non-existent vision, at least where it counted: ship lasers firing, a Galra soldier attacking, and the like. It was the small things he missed the most. Sunsets in the Arizona desert next to Shiro and his hoverbike. The faint purple glow of the insignia on the dagger he inherited from his dad. The vibrancy of his favorite color on his old leather riding jacket. The soft glow of the stars that had been the only constant in a life full of grief and loss. 

It was alright. He was still doing something important - he was saving the universe. The universe didn’t need him to be happy. The universe only needed him to be able to fight. 

“Great flying out there today, Keith,” he heard from somewhere behind him. 

In the past, he might have turned to look at the owner of that voice as he walked into the room. Now, he didn’t bother. It wasn’t because he could no longer make out the features - the disease hadn’t quite progressed that far. But it seemed like with each passing day they became more and more blurry, and that hurt to experience. An irrational part of him feared that one day soon he might completely forget the lines and curves he had long ago memorized.

“Hi Shiro,” he finally monotoned. “You have Red to thank for my flying - without her, I’d be about as useful as tits on a bull, floating out there in space.”

He could practically hear Shiro’s frown as he spoke. “ _You_ piloted her expertly during battle. The Galra would already be surrendering to us if they knew that even with vision loss you’re still the best pilot in the galaxy, much less Voltron.”

Keith scoffed. _Shiro_ was the best pilot among them. Maybe in the past, Keith would’ve stood a decent chance at claiming that title, but as he was now… 

_“The best,”_ Shiro insisted, as if he could hear Keith’s thoughts. 

The couch cushion dipped low beside him, and together they sat in companionable silence for a few minutes. 

“Why are you sitting in the lounge in the dark, Keith?”

“Not like it matters either way,” he responded, and figured he was mostly successful in keeping the bitterness out of his voice.

“It’s just that you usually don’t…”

“I wanted to start getting used to what it’s soon going to be like all the time for me,” he lied. Maybe if he was sufficiently crude about his blindness, he could make Shiro uncomfortable enough to leave him alone. The universe had already taken everything from Keith, every loved one, every home, even his vision, and demanded all of him in return - even his life for a cause he had never heard of but couldn’t ignore. The least it could do was let him wallow in self-pity for a few hours a day.

But he should have known. Shiro was never the type to be scared away, and he had never been able to leave Keith alone. Not since that first day they met, when Keith stole his car and Shiro responded by offering him a scholarship at the prestigious Galaxy Garrison. Through every mess Keith had created, every fight he had finished (though not started), Shiro had been there, ready to pick up the pieces, smooth things over, encourage Keith to grow and succeed. Shiro didn’t budge.

“I want to show you something,” said Shiro, running his warm hand along Keith’s arm as an offer to lead the way.

Keith let him intertwine their fingers together while they walked through the castle halls, willing his pounding heartbeat to slow down before Shiro discovered what Keith had spent so many years fighting to hide.

“Allura said that tonight we’ll be passing through a cloud of cosmic debris that the castle’s passive particle barrier will interact with-”

“And look like the meteor showers back on Earth. Yeah. I know,” Keith finished. He had been trying very hard not to think about just how much he resented not being able to see that. It was a little piece of home that he would’ve been able to get back. One of particular significance to Keith, who had sometimes only had the stars and the wonders of the night sky to keep him company - during his lonely childhood, during his exile in the desert after Shiro went missing from his space expedition…

The successive turns they took through the castle told Keith that Shiro was leading him to the observation deck - the one with the great glass dome that made you feel like you were floating in space surrounded by the beauty of the universe. Just perfect. The only thing better than being unable to see the stars was being unable to see the stars while sitting in the best seat in the house for that.

“Shiro, I don’t really wanna-,” he began, but Shiro was already pulling him down into one of the fluffy, recessed seats in the floor. They were large seats, but not large enough for two grown men to occupy without getting very familiar with each other. Keith ended up curled up against Shiro’s side, practically on his lap. The rest of the words died on his tongue as his brain tried to catch up with the signals coming from his body.

Shiro was warm. Soft and firm all over in just the right ways to make Keith’s mouth simultaneously feel dry and like there was too much saliva in it. He felt suddenly unable to breathe automatically. With great concentration, he focused on consciously making his breathing even and steady. How did people do this, again? Did he normally breathe more shallowly? Was this the right pace to make it seem like an unconscious action? Oh god, his palms were sweating...

Shiro interrupted his spiraling thoughts. Apparently oblivious to Keith’s internal panic, he had simply settled into the nest-like seat, wrapped his arms around the smaller man, and started talking.

“On the left, there’s a gauzy nebula, the faintest purple - it looks like a wispy cloud of cotton candy. At the edges, where the cloud feathers out into lavender tendrils, there’s a bright star. The tendrils reach out and around it, like a spidery hand about to grab it. And the star is _so_ bright. It looks almost blue - like the ghost bride’s dress in that movie we watched the night before I left for Kerberos.”

“Shiro, what-?”

“There’s a constellation to the right of that blue ghost-star, it looks kind of like a heart…? Yeah, definitely a heart shape. But those stars don’t have any color. They’re glowing soft and white, almost fluttering. It’s funny, the pulsing glow looks like it could be the constellation’s heartbeat.”

Keith felt a burning behind his eyes, in his sinuses, as he realized what Shiro was doing. He tried to discreetly swipe a hand through his eyes, but his wrist was caught in Shiro’s metallic arm. In the dark room, with only the faint light of the stars beyond the giant glass wall, he couldn’t make out Shiro’s expression, but somehow he knew. It was in the gentle way that Shiro was cradling his wrist, the feather-light touch of his left fingers against Keith’s other arm. 

Forget breathing automatically, Keith couldn’t breathe at _all_. The moment felt so tender, he feared the softest exhale would shatter it. So he held his breath. 

“Keith?”

When he felt sufficiently confident that his voice wouldn’t crack, he answered. 

“It sounds beautiful…”

“Yeah,” whispered Shiro. “It is.” In the murky darkness, Keith could just about make out that Shiro wasn’t staring at the stars anymore. He was looking at Keith with stars in his eyes.

It felt right. The moment felt right. There was something different about right now, a vulnerability around Shiro that could almost make Keith hope - maybe Shiro felt the same… What did he have to lose? Shiro’s friendship? Its dizzying intimacy, with the lingering shoulder touches and long embraces? 

He was the last person in Keith’s life that had never wavered in his belief in Keith. He was the best thing Keith had ever had. Keith would rather lose his sight (again) than lose Shiro. And yet,

“Shiro, I-”

Light broke across Shiro’s features, illuminating them for a moment before they were once again cast into shadow. Then another light flashed, and another. Keith turned to look at the domed glass wall, and gasped. The meteor shower. Streaks of light dashed across their field of vision, burning up in the castle’s passive particle barrier as the giant ship crossed the mass of debris. He couldn’t see the fine lines, but he could see the beautiful light they emitted - not soft and glowing, but fierce and blazing. Bright enough that even Keith could enjoy its resplendence.

“Keith.”

He looked back, the intermittent light from the meteor shower enough to illuminate Shiro’s blurry features. Hazy as Keith’s eyesight was, there was no mistaking the soft fondness he found there. The meteor shower was indeed beautiful, but Keith loved its starry light for another reason altogether: Shiro’s face at this moment was the most beautiful sight he’d ever seen.

“Me too,” Keith breathed out in answer to the unspoken words on Shiro’s lips, and leaned forward to capture them before Shiro could say anything more. 

Through the kiss, he felt Shiro smile brightly before melting under Keith’s touch. He felt the cool caress of Shiro’s prosthetic against the skin at his hips, Shiro’s flesh hand coming up to grip Keith’s hair and pull him fully against Shiro. White light danced behind his eyelids as the meteor shower lit up the sky all around them, but all he could think about was each line of Shiro’s body as it pressed against his own, and the distinct feeling of peace and contentment that washed over him like sunshine over his face.

That night Shiro held him like he was precious, like he was enough. Keith dozed off in his arms, beneath the gaze of the stars, to the thought that maybe things would be alright. No matter what happened with his sight, or with this war, Keith had Shiro, had himself, had this moment, had the stars in his eyes.

THE END.

**Author's Note:**

> 


End file.
